I got out of a real jam last month.
After five years in the same apartment, my roommate and I were moving out. She was recently engaged and moving in with her fiancé. I was 90 percent happy for her, 10 percent being all, ‘WHAT IS HAPPENING?!’ Fine, 80/20.
Point is, I was more happy for her than I wasn’t. But her exciting news meant not only looking for a new apartment of my own, but reconciling...

No one in my entire life has ever offered me any sort of drug. Like, not even pot.
Looking back, I should probably be offended.
Apparently I sailed through high school in my own little bubble of board-game loving friends—neither popular nor super nerdy. We were right in the middle and no one really paid any attention to us, one way or another. So not to sound all Laura Ingalls Wilder, but while...

The first time I participated in NAA’s Lobby Day, I arrived at the Capitol for a day of Senate and House meetings. I had absolutely no idea there were actual Senate and House buildings. I sort of assumed everything was conducted within the dome.
Yeah, I’m not really a political person. (And, in this case, perhaps not even an educated person.)
The point is that if I, of all people, can have a...

I traded in my identity for Mariah Carey’s 1994 Christmas album.
After avoiding Target’s gravitational pull for a solid eight months, I made the fateful decision to step inside the retail vortex around mid-December. I just had to get my hands on “All I Want For Christmas Is You” in CD format.
Unfortunately, someone else had to get their hands on my credit card information.
In the grand scheme of...